Elegy
by AshenDream
Summary: One month after her final battle with Emet-Selch, the Warrior of Light stands alone and makes a promise. Spoilers for the end of Shadowbringers.


_I finished Shadowbringers a few days ago and I've been thinking about the ending a lot._

_My partner, who usually proofreads/betas things for me, isn't allowed to read this one until they get caught up._

* * *

The night sky had always been beautiful, but Atiqa had never thought that _darkness_ could be. Darkness hid the monsters she fought to keep at bay. Darkness was when you couldn't see what the path before you hid. Darkness was absence. It was fear. It was hopelessness.

It was funny. It had always seemed so fundamentally, unshakably true, this idea that such an abstract thing could only ever be… well, _wrong._ (The darkness she herself wielded had always felt different, somehow, but now she understood that a part of her had always known that things weren't so black and white.) The Ascians brought Darkness; the Scions brought Light. Good versus evil. A tale as old as time.

She almost missed the comfort of that certainty.

Mount Gulg was a rotting corpse. Not long after she'd struck Vauthry — or Innocence, or whatever godsforsaken thing he'd wanted to be called at the end — down, the pristine white structures he'd interlaced through the mountain's caldera had begun to decay. Like this was a place where time was unencumbered, where it could run as fast as it liked, and damn the consequences. A month had passed since that day, and this city built for a single half-man looked as if it had been abandoned for a century. Platforms hung, suspended on nothing; were they lower than they had been last time. Towers reached for the stars; had their tilts worsened?

The black iron blade on her back hung heavy as Atiqa Tian stared up at the stars. It did that more often, lately. The burden weighed heavier every day, and she had been crafty enough to see the metaphor even _before_ Y'shtola had pointed it out, silver eyes gleaming with mischief, that wry smile dancing on her lips. (When she'd pointed this out, Y'shtola's smirk had become a laugh. "How very _Alphinaud_ of you, she'd said.) Atiqa was her weapon, and her weapon was an aegis for the innocent. A greatsword wasn't something most people thought of as a _defensive _tool, but she'd taken to it much more quickly than she ever had to the much-more-traditional sword and shield. Paladins had always seemed _pure_ in a way she'd never felt entirely comfortable. The path of the Dark Knight was one of passion, and passion was something she understood. As stoic as she let everyone think she was, her heart was a maelstrom.

"Woe betide those who stand opposed to the weapon of light," she murmured. "And woe betide those who stand with her." Half-remembered words spoken long-ago by a soft voice, desperation trying to masquerade as mockery. Was that why she'd come here, of all places? Harm had come to both friends and foes, here, on this very platform. Gulg was an awful place, and it held nothing but awful memories. Even she wasn't sure why she'd chosen this place to mark the inauguration of her pilgrimage.

Maybe that was fitting. When you remembered something, when you _truly remembered _something, you held fast to the bad as well as the good. What had transpired at the bottom of the sea could not have happened without the traumas she had endured here, in this place. Emet-Selch would have been thwarted, yes, but the Crystal Exarch... She shook her head wryly. It was still hard not to think of him that way. G'raha Tia would be dead. And who knew what else? The Ascian might have lived, in such a world.

She was dodging the issue.

With a sigh, Atiqa unbuckled a pair of straps, letting her sword fall, and followed it down to the crumbling stone. At least she wasn't wearing her armor. That was even heavier than the sword. They said she bore it easily, the weight of steel and the weight of expectation, but the damn suit still ached if she wore it too long. The stars blazed overhead, twinkling, as if still in the throes of joy at their reappearance.

_Which one are you, I wonder? _

The constellations were the same as the ones back home. When everything else about the First was so unrecognizable, that single similarity made her head spin for reasons she'd never been able to properly articulate. Even G'raha hadn't understood, though he'd smiled bemusedly and nodded along with her fumbling attempts. Ryne had understood, though. Ryne understood a lot more than Atiqa had first thought.

Darkness enveloped her like a blanket, and she wrapped herself in it. She took comfort in it. Darkness hid danger, but light could do the same. The same way her righteous anger could protect instead of destroy, light could blind and burn. What she did was an extension of that. A cool breeze ruffled her hair, strands of brown, tipped in purple (the result of a lost bet with Alisaie that she'd ended up liking too much to change), blowing over her eyes. Her ears twitched, and she exhaled in quiet satisfaction.

One thing about being the Warrior of Light they never told you. It was busy. You really started to treasure those fleeting moments of absolute peace whenever you could get them.

The familiar words echoed. The old catechism. Now seemed as good a time as any.

_For those I've lost._

It was like a prayer. Something she half remembered someone saying a long a time ago, that had blossomed into the most fundamental building blocks of her identity.

_For those I can yet save._

All the friends who no longer drew breath.

All the friends who still did.

She remembered them.

_A Roegadyn scholar with a bullish smile and a passion that couldn't be extinguished._

_A Lalafel who masked his love for his friends with a sneer that they'd all seen right through._

_An Elezen she would have called brother, who'd reminded her that a smile more befit a hero than tears._

_A Doman who had been both monster and innocent, the hunter and the hunted, the oppressor and the oppressed._

It seemed the list grew longer every time she did this. The people she'd lost. The people she hadn't been able to save.

She remembered them all.

She held them close.

When she fought her last battle, when her sword finally fell from bloody fingers and she could _rest, _she would see them all again. On that day, she would hold her head high and tell them with pride in her heart that she'd made sure they hadn't died for nothing.

Her cheeks were wet, but she made no effort to wipe them.

Of the Scions, only Y'shtola had ever seen her cry, when the despair had taken hold and she'd needed someone to cling to in those darkest of nights. To everyone else… she was larger than life. She was an icon of hope. She _was_ hope.

She had to be strong, and so she did not cry where they could see.

_The Hyur who had first brought them all together, who had become something more than mortal and repeatedly given of herself until nothing was left._

_A man who betrayed himself and everyone he loved to fight for his people, when no one else would._

_A girl who gave everything to ease the passing of hopeless, and who was rewarded with a fate worse than death._

She spoke each of their names aloud.

She had regrets enough to tear her apart, but she would not break. She would keep pushing forward, keep fighting for a better tomorrow that might never arrive.

"_You have the strength to forge your own path._

_You will leave countless lives better than you found them._

_The souls you touch will never forget your kindness._

_When you question your worth and your choices, _

_they will raise their voices to remind you of the_

_difference you have made."_

And at the end of the list, for the first time, she spoke a name.

"Emet-Selch."

She closed her eyes. There was no one to hear. The breeze carried her words away from her, and she hoped he could hear, wherever he was.

"We weren't friends. Not really. I kind of hated you, but you knew that. You weren't stupid, and we weren't subtle."

He'd had such a stupid, infuriating smirk. She wish she'd recognized it for the mask it had been. The contempt that was really pain. The arrogance that was truly longing.

Fordola had asked Atiqa in disbelief how she could possibly keep going after everything she had seen. Now Atiqa knew how Fordola had felt.

"I don't think I could have saved you, Emet. I've spent the last month turning this all over in my mind again and again and again, trying to think how I could have changed it, and I have this…. _fantasy_ that I could have helped you move on, that we could have become friends, that I could have shown you the beauty in… us. All of us. Here on the First, and back on the Source, and on all the shards that haven't rejoined. Because... I think you could have come to care for us mortals. You could have helped build that world that didn't need heroes."

"_The gulf between us is a reflection of the disparity between_

_the world as it was… and what it has become."_

"But I don't think you wanted to be saved. If Tsuyu taught me anything, it's that... you can't force redemption onto someone who doesn't want it. You wrapped yourself in your pain like it was armor, and you stopped being able to tell where it ended and your heart began. You cast yourself as the villain, because that made it easier, and you did _monstrous _things, but you did them out of love. Not hate. I thought that's what you all were. Hate."

Her voice shook. She hardly ever talked this much, and there was something discomforting about it. Sacrilegious.

"What you went through… All the horrors I've seen… they're nothing. I've never had to watch my world end, to see all my friends and family and loved ones die in fire and terror. I've tried to put myself in your position, and…" Her voice cracked. "I don't know if I'd be any better. I don't know what I'd do to bring it all back."

This time, she did scrub furiously at her eyes. The rough fabric of her shirtsleeve was scratchy on her skin.

"I had to stop you, Emet. I think you understood why, in the end. But I… I promise you this. You didn't die for nothing."

Slowly, she pushed herself to her feet, eyes cast heavensward, her vision still wavering and wet.

"You didn't die for nothing, because I _remember_. I remember Amaurot. I remember the wonders they built. I remember the stories they told. I remember the way they debated, and the way they cared, and the way they lived and loved and fought. I remember their end. I remember, and… and I'm going to do more than remember. I'm going to go out there and learn. I'm going to learn everything I can about them, whatever still remains out there, and I will tell them. We will stand in awe of their accomplishments and mourn their deaths and learn from their mistakes. I will make sure that the world remembers where we came from, when all of creation was one."

Her voice grew louder and louder with every word, until by the end, she was nearly shouting. This high up… it wasn't like anyone could hear her.

Her voice echoed off the stone walls of the caldera, and she stood, breathing hard, for a few long moments.

When she spoke again, it was in a whisper.

"And I will remember you, Emet-Selch. I will remember the man who loved them so much that he would have done anything to bring them back. I will mourn the person you could have been. The world you could have helped create, if you had been able to see the beauty that was all around you."

The night sky seemed to go on forever. In the distance, a bird she couldn't recognize trilled, and a second hooted in answer, and then a third. There was still life here. The Sin Eaters hadn't ruined this place. Life continued on.

"I will remember you, and I will remember them," she said again. "I'll remember. For those you lost. For those we can yet save."

Atiqa Tian picked up her fallen sword, gave the sky one last mournful glance, and started walking.

There was work to be done.

* * *

_This exact story has probably been written and published like a dozen times by now but I haven't read any FFXIV fic, so I haven't seen it._

_I finished Shadowbringers as a Gunbreaker but Atiqa is always going to be a Dark Knight in my heart._

_If you read this and liked it, let me know! It's my first time writing about one of my favorite games ever._


End file.
